Phobic
by greyrondo
Summary: Fear of remembrance, fear of being forgotten. Fear of choice, fear of submission. Fear of life, fear of light. Fear of the future, fear of death. Fear of fate. There's something familiar about every one of Chaos' followers, but Sephiroth can't place it.
1. Abandoned Glory

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

As much as Sephiroth would like to be done with this battle between Cosmos and Chaos and return—somehow—to the matters he left behind, with Cloud and the Planet, he can't help but notice the whispers that chase him, whispers from the others that he has a very, very important part to play in the very existence of the current battle.

This fic is rated T because it started off as a way for me to experiment with Sephiroth's way of speaking (because he never really says all that much nowadays, even though what he does say is usually very… well, not very nice, to say the least.)

Please enjoy and please review!

~greyrondo

**Phobic**

**Chapter One: Abandoned Glory**

This world is new, even as it is nothing I haven't seen before. The green glow of the Lifestream is a prison as it coils around me, but there is something more. Something dark like stardust. And it is power distilled, all the ephemeral and peripheral tossed away until only purity remained.

I doubt that I can depend on something so subjective as my memories in this unearthly cathedral. Especially when I consider what they tell me.

They tell me that just like I summoned the great meteor from the sky, the sum of our darkness and bloodlust invoked the great deity Chaos and scalded the crust of this world that is not mine, but looks so much like it.

It is what I dreamt mine would be: extinguished, fractured, perfect in its inorganic disregard for the obsessive-compulsive tics of order and mass consciousness' conception of what exactly defines 'ugly'.

Order is nothing more than the illusion of tranquility. Peace-keepers are never far from their swords, or better yet, their state-of-the-art tracking guns so that they can pretend that the deaths on their shoulders are nothing more than a statistic, like some double-blind psychological experiment. Accept the responsibility, and death becomes weightless to those who are strong enough.

"I heard you're looking for someone." Garland.

It begins with denial, like most things. Pour out a shot of the propaganda-laced newspapers or inhale a line of commercially-owned media networks that abandoned the watchdog post $300 million gil ago. Either way, the story is about happiness caught aflame.

Don't blame the fire. Fire is an after-effect. It doesn't destroy; it's just a grave marker. The decision that made the fire condemned everything to ashes before the spark met the oxygen and fuel. Lightning. Orders from the top. Denial.

Erase the evidence and see if the knowledge catches fire along with it. See if watching strangers' happy lives reduced to cinders can reverse the chemical reaction, undo the permanent and return the naïveté to your innocent eyes.

"Well, are you looking for someone, or not?"

It doesn't work. You should have known before you lit that match.

You have heard about me, after all. You've chanted my name with a breathless smile on your face, just like the rest of the vicarious valkyries who haunt the battlefield from behind the lens of live video. Then your delusion caught fire and you knew better, and you whispered my name in fear because it's a name that you can't help but whisper.

Sephiroth.

Knowledge with fear is better than the alternative. If the cameras had their way, then you never would have known. They would have kept me alive in their press releases of glory and their medals of honor, and I would have become a living memory, a legend with a cut-and-paste face. I said it was a better alternative, but we both know which one you would prefer. Everyone loves a hero.

But choice is a privilege reserved for a select few. And some audiences don't know that it's a camera they're looking through.

Garland is a fallen hero. He has no face, only a mask to better render his visage in biased sketches of history. He wears a suit of armor because the blood of innocents cannot be allowed to stain his flesh and tarnish his image, for those who would have used his accomplishments for their own gain could not allow for duality. Just as the stories of my own battles compound upon themselves and twist the truth until they fill the void of fantasy, the weapon Garland wields changes form as he sees fit. And he doesn't even know what a camera is_._

It's comforting to be on the other side of the lens. Nothing that plays out in front of me is a surprise. Why he says this instead of that, why she couldn't be bothered. It's like I've known them all their lives. I might as well be the voice inside of their collective insecure brain.

I know how Garland feels. I know that when he wonders what could have happened, had Chaos not come his way, he thinks of the lie that he abandoned. A life of service leads to freedom only in death. And there's only one way out. The ones who think of that way as dark are the ones who would do better to stay on the pre-worn path.

Garland sighs, and shakes his head. "Do what you will, Sephiroth. I don't have time for this."

"You have enough time to pretend that you have something better to do right now than talk to me."

"Pretend all you like, Sephiroth."

I glare at him. "Excuse me?" I demand, but he's staring off, as if he never spoke. When he hears me, he wastes a moment giving me a confused look.

"I said, do what you will. I don't have time for this. I expect this sort of behavior from one of the others, but not from you. Are you all right? If you need some time, don't come. I'll have the Emperor fill you in on our goals. "

Our illusion of camaraderie. His destruction, my destruction, it's all the same. It won't happen. If I didn't know better, I would find it surprising that we haven't all stabbed each other in the back yet.

I suppose that comment was in bad taste. But Cloud has another goddess of light on which to squander his hope now.

Cloud. Just the thought of him…

"Why are you laughing?" Garland wants to know.

Something that always has eluded me is what exactly I thought of Cloud. Forget the lies that I tell him. Those are words utilized for a specific purpose.

Those words are quick to come and quick to alienate me. They aren't true. He was an unexpected complication first and a delicate mind to toy with second, not the other way around.

"I can't believe I have to take you seriously."

That isn't meant for the person who hears me.

"What did you leave behind in your world, Garland? Did you draw your sword to feel alive? Not necessarily to kill others, but to feel the fear that despite your skill, you have the slightest chance of dying? What other pain would that have erased, I wonder… did your glory sever the connection between yourself and the rest of the world? And if it did, it makes perfect sense that fighting in the name of your king would no longer be enough. You needed that brush with the darkness to give you the same rush that merely swinging your sword at human enemies once did. It's all right. I knew I was different, too…" I say and I turn, but Garland is gone.

It is as if he was never here. I am the only one listening.

There's really no one else here when it comes down to it. Just Cloud and myself, and a few distractions.

But it would not do to have the Emperor tell me of Garland's plans. If Garland could see the glint of pride behind the Emperor's eyes, he would know better than to test him by making him a messenger boy. Unless Garland does know, and he means to make an example.

Let the Emperor have his pride. Then he won't see any reason to challenge the status quo. It won't hurt me to listen to what Garland and the others have to say.

But what am I even doing here?


	2. Delusions of Grandeur

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

Hello everyone! And welcome to chapter two of Phobic. The Emperor and Kuja try (or don't) to make friends, but of course Sephiroth... anyways. Please enjoy and review!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Two: Delusions of Grandeur**

You would think that if I put forth the energy to drag myself to Garland's joke of a strategy meeting, then everyone else could somehow find it in themselves to do the same. But no, I only count nine. I don't yet know everyone's names, so I don't know who couldn't have been bothered to show up.

If this straggler was planning on being fashionably late, then he or she missed the opportunity. We soon part ways, leaving Garland to either fume or meditate.

The one who wears too much gold, the Emperor, comes up to me. But as dazzling as he tries to be, something more catches my attention. What? What was that I just now saw? Just now, I could have sworn that I saw…

No, it's nothing.

"So which one of us will it be, I wonder?" the Emperor murmurs poisonously in such a way that it's obvious I'm the one he wants to hear his voice. "Which of us will win the battle for Garland's position? Who shall earn Chaos' blessing?"

I want to turn to him while the others are still near. I want to shatter his self-composed zone of comfort and draw outside attention to his whispers so he won't try it again. But I'm curious to know why he selected me as his rival. One would assume that I, comparatively, draw little attention to myself.

"I didn't realize that was what was at stake," I say pointedly.

He chuckles. "Please. Like everyone isn't already thinking of it. Luckily, not everyone can act successfully upon their schemes. So the question is, do we declare a truce until the weaklings have killed each other off, or do we waste no time?"

"Tell me, Emperor," I respond. "What makes you think that you've endeared yourself to me enough so that we can even have this conversation without it turning into a farce?"

I do believe that he's temporarily speechless, so I rid him of the awkward burden of a response and continue. "Next time, why don't you think more carefully about who you choose to threaten?" I suggest casually. I wonder who I should allow to walk away first, him or myself. But then—

I stop. I breathe in sharply and the air stings with sunlit warmth. I know what I just saw. There, contained in the fraction of a heartbeat or a single frame of film, I saw a cloaked figure in a wheelchair. But I won't even deny the impossibility. It denies itself.

Everything returns to the established norm.

I watch as the Emperor makes his exit. I feel that he would get offended if I used such a simple, plebian word as 'leaves.' He's so absorbed in the display of power, it disgusts me. You can't become strong by showing off or pretending that you're someone great. If you are strong, greatness will come in itself, if it's something that by then you still desire.

True power often has a way of disillusioning its possessor.

"And trespassing upon the pharaoh's gilded lands are winds that shift the ceaseless sands. Gaze upon his mightiest works and despair, for naught but ruins tremble there."

I look to my side just as that serpentine voice begins another stanza. Judging from looks, he must have been the one who didn't bother answering Garland's call.

"A king of kings—"

"Do you have a name?" I ask him to give him something else to talk about. He sounds too much like someone else's poetry I had to listen to far too often. But unlike Genesis, I don't know this one well enough to start a fight in order to shut him up.

He stares at me, and says blankly as if it should be obvious, "I am Sephiroth's death wish."

'I am Sephiroth's death wish.' I want to laugh. He looks like he could fall over if a breeze struck him the wrong way. "Are you sure you aren't merely projecting your own?"

Why is the look that he gives me filled with pity? "Call me Kuja," he says as if he's doing me a favor. "Must have been quite a shock, learning that there's a god after all. More specifically, a god tailored for us, and most importantly, a god who isn't _you_."

I don't so much stare at him as stare through him.

"Don't take it personally, I told Kefka the same thing," he laughs. There's a bitter and desperate edge to his voice, one that sounds like it hasn't always been there. But it seems to have taken to him well, so it must have been sleeping inside for quite some time.

"You didn't forget yourself, now did you?" I ask, amused.

He just shakes his head. "We're not like the Emperor, who just does it for fun. For people like us, it's not about the power. It's about being in control, just for once."

"'People like us'?" I echo. I mean for my words to strike him, but his attention is fixated on his nails. "Don't include me in your therapy circle. We're nothing alike."

He just smiles at his perfectly applied blood-red lacquer. He's not like Genesis. He's even worse. "Of course we aren't. I don't like Kefka much either, truth be told, but test tubes are thicker than water…"

Now he has my attention. "What are you saying?"

That's when he looks up and meets my eyes. I hate his self-satisfied smirk. "You don't think Kefka was born like that, do you? Do some research. I heard you're good at it."

Did he really just say that? Since I can't kill him, I tell the boy with the death wish, "don't worry. Eventually, everyone dies."

I've upset him. A dark shadow passes over him as he replies, "And everyone is reborn. What are you waiting for?" he says oddly. "Figure it out already. This play has only just begun and I want it to be over."


	3. Slaughtered Innocence

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

I promise that Kefka survives for longer than he did in a certain other Dissidia fic of mine. Sephiroth also has the pleasure of speaking with Ultimecia in this chapter. Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Three: Slaughtered Innocence**

I take my time seeking out Kefka. I don't want that punk to find out that I listened to him. I don't want someone else to have to listen to his sappy compositions. I wonder what he would write with what he knows. I laugh at the thought of what he would write with what he doesn't know.

I look around the laboratory and for a moment I forget the fond memories the whole environment evokes, and wonder if this was what Kuja was talking about.

A laboratory without even proper knowledge of disinfectant. Little wonder that Kefka turned out how he did.

To be perfectly honest, I initially doubted the state of technological advancement in the others' worlds. But truly, everywhere I looked, I saw something that reminded me of not-home. This lab of Kefka's particularly felt a little closer to my neighborhood than I enjoyed.

"So where's your friend?" I say conversationally as I turn my head in Kefka's direction. My gloved hand lingers on a cylindrical glass pane. The leather keeps me from feeling the chill.

"My friend? Haven't got one of those," Kefka responds with an odd dash of cheer. "Oh, you mean the oh-so-friendly little Angel of Death."

I frown. Something inside of me wasn't particularly expecting him to say that. "Pardon?"

"I might as well tell you. He sure won't. He gets sensitive, you know. You're not one of those sensitive types, are you?" he wants to know. He's tinkering with something, but it seems that all power except for the canned lights has been cut. I don't think he notices, or cares either way.

I don't know exactly what he means by 'sensitive type', and I tell him so.

"You know, one of those who freak out when they figure out what's going on and do something extreme like set a village on fire because they're in denial."

I clear my throat. "Well, I wouldn't consider it denial—"

He isn't really listening. "Kuja torched a planet. Some people are really crazy, aren't they?"

Some people certainly are.

"Kuja was specifically engineered to kill as many people in a short amount of time as possible. Doesn't get any better than that, right? But you should hear about Golbez. Not a test tube between conception and puberty and look at the baggage he's carrying around…"

He keeps on chattering and I'm more than happy to be left behind.

It seems I'm not the only mass murderer here, then. But why should those deaths be on my conscience in the first place? They were lives I would have ended anyways with my meteor.

If I killed them for Shinra, that made it Shinra's choice, not mine. Or did it? My inability to question my circumstances made their deaths my decision. By waiting until the situations got out of hand with Genesis and Angeal, my hesitation made everything my fault. The true question, then, asked where the blame laid. I didn't ask to be created, tampered with.

If that makes fault inapplicable, then does that eliminate my sense of right and wrong?

"So what makes you special, anyways? What's your story?" Kefka asks me.

"My story?" I reply. "What about yours? Mine's isn't very exciting, I'm afraid."

"Well, then mine certainly is!" Kefka cackles. "I was a god, you know. I had followers, people who loved me and worshipped me. Because they knew that if they didn't, I would kill them! Of course, some of them I would have killed anyways. Just for funsies…"

Shinra needed all of those people to die because it had no absolute power, not true power like I possess. For me, killing was not a necessity, and yet I gravitated towards that decision anyways. Was that Shinra's influence, fear of being opposed, or something reminiscent of the bloodthirsty clown in front of me?

For every action, there is an effect. A consequence. And naturally, there are consequences that one person will consider good and another person, bad. But this clown lives in a mental state in which there is no perception of negative consequences. I killed many, many people for no good reason under Shinra's influence, and for my own perception of a good reason once the only influence was my own. Would it be better to be like Kefka, or should I be cautious of my sensibilities decomposing into such a state?

It seems there are several ways of being something other than human.

"And then," Kefka continues for his benefit more than mine, "everything all went to hell—"

He freezes in the middle of his speech. The air stagnates, and I look up just in time to realize that I have to move or die.

Magical shards fly towards me; I dodge. They shatter the glass behind me upon impact, but the glass doesn't fall to the ground. It spiderwebs, and floats suspended in midair. I think I understand what's going on now. Someone here can twist the ebb and flow of time.

Would it be the boy mage? The Emperor? I wouldn't put this past either one of them.

But no, the one who steps out from the shadows with a cold smile is Ultimecia. "Sephiroth," she says to me, "don't take this personally," as she snaps out another series of shards with the back of her wrist.

"That's a hard request to fulfill," I tell her when I cut them down in mid-air. "Why don't you freeze me too if you're this determined to attack me?"

"Because I can't freeze you any more than I can freeze myself. It's complicated like that," she laughs casually. "I know this is rather rude of me, but it's pointless to explain what's going on here, not when I'm going to end this right now."

"I have no argument with you," I insist. "I have no argument with any of you. Maybe a little with the Emperor, but it's more that he makes too many assumptions about his own position. I'm here for one reason and it doesn't involve anyone here."

Even as she draws her wrist back to attempt another assault, she pauses. "Why should I believe you?"

"I don't know your purpose for being here, so I can't make you believe that my purpose is valid. Put simply, I am here to eliminate an obstacle that would interfere with my plans for my own world."

"That's what everyone is doing here," she says quietly and crosses her arms tightly over her chest. "Well, maybe. I'm less than confident in Golbez and Jecht's solidarity. But that's…all… you're doing here? I don't feel like you're lying to me."

"If you don't feel like I'm lying to you, then it's now an issue of whether or not you trust your judgment rather than anything I can contribute to this conversation," I tell her.

"You don't know?" Ultimecia muses. "That's fine, then. I mean—never mind me. I apologize for attacking you, I made an assumption that was obviously unfounded in reality—"

"How much of this chimera world is reality?" I laugh.

"Well—" Ultimecia begins, but then she shakes her head and chuckles to herself. "If you'll excuse me. There's a toy I want to break," she says and turns around, fading into the stagnant air as she does.

Kefka stirs, and looks up at me curiously. "Were you playing with that sword of yours while I was talking to you? That's rude, you know."


	4. Prototype

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

Just like with… now that I come to think of it… with every other Dissidia fic I've written, I've kind of opened up the interpretation of the characters' canon pasts to include their pasts in the original games. I think it's what makes the characters who they are! Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Four: Prototype**

I am in a place that could most easily and sensibly be described as somewhere not here. The fact that it most closely resembles the life-sapped badlands surrounding the outskirts of Midgar leaves me even less understanding of these strange visions I've been experiencing.

Cloud. Just for a moment, time and space expand and he evaluates me from a distance, perched on a motorcycle. The sun gleams grey. Then here and now contract and snap back into their rightful dimensions.

Cloud, where are you? Come to me. You know where to find me. What's keeping you? How can you stand to leave me alone like this?

I return my focus to the matter at hand. Ultimecia's comment made me curious, and even though I did not find out exactly what Kefka's story entailed, I lost interest in him. Ultimecia is a much more intriguing subject of study.

Her desire to live is so strong that it's tangible in the very air around her. It's a raw, singed-edged bitterness that sneers from her eyes, but it's almost pitiable at the same time. It reminds me of Cloud attempting to fight me, but it also reminds me of myself, refusing to stop clawing my way out from the Lifestream.

Maybe just as I see the world I come from as my possession alone, she sees time as hers. So it's understandable why she's so upset right now. The way she sees it, the 'toy' she wants to go 'break' had wasted her time.

But what had she been told about me?

I cross my arms over my chest and lean against the pillar on the far and dark side of the shrine dedicated to Chaos, although it seems more like a palace from the fairytales I never heard as a child.

"Why do you dress like that?" Ultimecia says. I can't see her or her conversation partner, but I don't think that having a visual is going to be particularly important.

"Because my daddy didn't love me. That's why you do it, don't you?"

"Shut up, you stupid little boy! Because you can't keep quiet, I thought he knew. Don't talk to him about us anymore; he's not an imbecile. He's going to figure things out."

"Don't blame me for your mistakes, you old hag. What's wrong, is the withering time witch worried about the state of the sand in her hourglass?"

I hear the snap of the back of Ultimecia's hand against Kuja's face. "When it comes to my time, I have more important things to worry over than my figure. You should treat this with more care too—unless you think you're too good to have the same motives as anyone else here."

So even though Ultimecia misunderstood something—something yet to be revealed—there is still a genuine concern, one that concerns me. I'm afraid that my past with Shinra has made me particularly curious about myself; I don't want to be caught off guard. I don't want to discover ever again that my life is a lie, my time, effort and bloodshed a tool for someone else.

Like Ultimecia, I want my time to be my own, and because I wasted so much of the most important part of my time—the years that I grew up—in the service of a lie, there's nothing I wouldn't do to keep from becoming nothing more than a memory, a continuation of mythos in the minds of people until they get distracted by something more interesting and I'm forgotten forever.

That's why I can't afford to play along with this war and sacrifice the world that I came from. I need to go back there, so that I can wrestle myself free from the Lifestream once again and make it properly my own.

Am I afraid of death?

I refuse for it to occur to me, certainly. Is that the same semblance of denial that Ultimecia indulges in as she fights against time?

No. The rules that apply to her do not apply to me.

"I'm choosing to ignore the fact that you dared to strike me," Kuja tells her through clenched teeth, "because I want to know what exactly bothers you about knowing that everything hinges on him making the right choice."

That much I already understand. Ultimecia isn't someone so unfamiliar that I can't see through her.

"I mean that if the battle shifts to one between Cosmos and Chaos, that keeps it from being personal, doesn't it? And personal is who Sephiroth is," Kuja adds. "So if Sephiroth chooses to remain Sephiroth, then we're—"

"Unnecessary. Kind of like how you already are, little boy."

"Excuse me?"

Ultimecia laughs. "You're already spent. No matter how this plays out, your time will still be gone. You're incomplete, aren't you? A prototype with an expiration date?"

"Maybe I am," Kuja says with a tone that, if it weren't so cold, would be almost whimsical. "That's the part I play in this. What about you, so afraid of death that you want to continue living endlessly until you don't know what to do with yourself?"

"You're just jealous. We both know that if you had the chance to be immortal, you would think better of living forever. If anyone's afraid of death, it's you, you pathetic little boy."

I didn't know that Kuja was a failure. He's so close to Genesis, it's almost as if he were forged from my memories. But there's something more complex than just Genesis—I see myself in him as well. I suppose if I were in the same place, I wouldn't see any reason to do differently. I'm not in his place, but I can understand the feeling of having nothing to lose.

When you realize that your life is a lie, you're left with nothing to protect. So when you do find something that you can call your own, you'll do anything for it. For me, that was my inheritance. My mother made me unique and gave me a sense of self when I felt the most like nobody at all.


	5. Ruptured Fate

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

Sephiroth still doesn't know what's going on. But an unwitting conversation with the Cloud of Darkness and a brief, silent meeting with the Emperor, accompanied by another one his strange visions, leave him some clues that his pride allows him to ignore. Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Five: Ruptured Fate**

"What is that they're talking about, Mother? I don't have any interest in Chaos beyond self-preservation: I just want to return to our world and continue your legacy. There's nothing here for us in this barren shell of a world. There's nothing to conquer, nothing over which to share your will. You've always been the one to shed light on the truth; what part do they mean for me to play here?"

When I stand on the shards of the other worlds, there's something false about them. They feel like holograms. Only the Lifestream resonates with reality. It only makes sense that I can only hear Mother's voice and see her face in a place that truly exists to the both of us.

"Sephiroth, what is fate?" she asks me as she stands before me.

My initial answer is that it is something to be overruled, but then I would be speaking only of the circumstances—Shinra, SOLDIER—that attempted to mask my true destiny. At its core, fate is what the weak call the decisions made by the infinitely stronger, before they crumble under the force like that of a god's. That is the answer I give to Mother.

"If I tell you the truth, will I get what I desire? I don't believe so. Just like a single conflicted soul, we have split, depending on the path we believe that will most likely lead us to what attracts us. So I'm afraid that the answer you seek will change depending on which of us you ask, and the one thing you will never receive is the truth."

I take a wary step backwards. "You—you aren't Mother," I insist. "You're one of them, masquerading as her—"

And then I realize that I have been speaking to the Cloud of Darkness this entire time. Mother was never here.

"Fate must be absolute," she tells me. "The child from my world attempted to make the choice that you spoke of, attempted to usurp my decision to return the world to the zero point and become one who could determine fate. How dare something so insignificant try to make it so that I have no say in the world's future?"

I don't have anything to say to her. I'm not insane: Mother was in front of me. I know what I saw.

Footsteps make a further intrusion into my sanctuary of reality. The Emperor comes in between us, and looks at the Cloud of Darkness for a silent moment before turning to me.

"I don't recall inviting you here to converse," I say first.

He says something, but almost as if my mind is trying to disprove my bid for sanity, the Lifestream disappears and I find myself in some sort of non-place, a sanitized office painted beige by the sunlight streaming in through the closed blinds, making the room darker than it would be otherwise.

I could be anywhere, but I would know that logo on the wall anywhere: the Shinra Company. I kneel on the ground before the man in the wheelchair, but it's obvious to me that I'm hardly bowing to him. I've seen him before.

Of all the people to hide his face, the man in the wheelchair is Rufus Shinra. He used to be so proud of his looks, of the way he could wear his father's power like a tacky gold accessory—and often did—and strut about the building like he knew what he was doing.

But now he's afraid.

Why am I seeing this? This isn't even a memory, like that illusion with Cloud and the motorcycle. Cloud, where are you? I haven't seen any of the warriors of Cosmos that my so-called comrades are hunting, and you are no exception. Are you wasting all of your strength trying to hide yourself from me? Let's see how little of your strength remains.

I call to him.

My voice seizes his mind, dragging him to the ground. I don't think he hears me in the sense that I want him to, but he is paralyzed by my presence in his mind. But where is he?

I look through his eyes, and I see the wastelands of Midgar again. That's impossible—Midgar doesn't exist in this broken half-existence of feigned reality.

Come find me, Cloud, and I'll search for you. We'll meet halfway, so that you won't know when I'm coming. I want to fight you without giving you the chance to block your mind from me.

The Lifestream returns to my vision, as if I had never left. It's likely that I never did—within the Lifestream, I don't need to physically move to travel. Only, if this world truly is a fragile composition of all of our worlds, then that shouldn't work, since their worlds did not possess their own Lifestreams.

The Cloud of Darkness and the Emperor are gone as well, just as easily as if they had never been there. Maybe they weren't, maybe I was imagining them.

No. I was not imagining them. I set off through the Lifestream, determined to find that fragment of Midgar and find Cloud.

As I walk, I can't shake the anger at seeing Shinra. Like Rufus, I can honestly be considered one of Shinra's children, produced for the same reason that Rufus surely was—security. Rufus was corporate royalty, a prince to take up his father's crown so that if I had not escaped Shinra when I did, surely SOLDIER and its experiments would have continued. And I was their manufactured 'hero' or controlled bloodbath, depending on whose propaganda I read.

Simmering in wrath, I don't know how long it takes before I realize that I'm going nowhere, that I've looped back to the Lifestream.

To say I'm furious is an understatement. It was my decision to move, to find someplace, and the Lifestream won't let me. The Lifestream isn't supposed to overpower me; I'm the one who dominates its flow.

I didn't bring the Shinra Company to its knees so that I could have visions of seeing its logo framed in some cozy office. I didn't subvert my existence into the Lifestream so that I could be rendered powerless.

Too much of my life was spent under someone else's control. I'm the one in control here now.


	6. The Narrowing Path

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

Not really about Sephiroth, but I love writing Jecht (I might have said this before.) I also like playing as him. He's such a far cry from my usual Kuja (in both fighting style and in appearances) that he's the perfect person when I need a break from the 'Graceful Glider.' If Golbez weren't so slow, he would be my top choice. 'Thaumaturge' has to be up there on the list of coolest job class titles. (Just in case you're wondering how the Sephy fits into my Dissidia scheme, I train against him a lot. But as Squall in his uniform.)

Please enjoy, and please tell me what you think!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Six: The Narrowing Path**

"Having any trouble?" a voice that sounds suspiciously like Jecht's calls out to me. What do all of these people want with me? They disgust me, trying to work me into their plans and make it sound as if I'm integral to their schemes. I'm not their chess piece; I'm not their SOLDIER First Class to send in when they want to secure a victory.

"You look like you're putting a whole lot of effort into going nowhere," he casually comments as he crosses his arms over his tattooed chest.

I smile. "Jecht, fight me."

He tosses me a skeptical glare. "Why should I fight you?"

"Because you're the only one besides Garland that I consider to be a true warrior."

I want to evaluate myself, and Jecht wields a weapon remarkably close to that sword Cloud inherited indirectly from Angeal. I don't consider losing against Cloud a possibility, but that's why I'm facing Jecht instead. If I were to lose, how would it happen?

"Well that makes sense," Jecht answers me. "Of course only a couple of us could handle an out-and-out brawl. After all, it's not like being a warrior's the only thing you're about. We're all more complex than the weapon we carry."

I frown. "The Cloud of Darkness also mentioned that it's best to think of us as a single mind, albeit one that has been split into its component parts."

"I'm not going to fight you, Sephiroth," Jecht says dismissively. "You're pissed because you didn't get your way. And that's when you lose."

"I've never lost," I tell him quietly.

Jecht laughs. "Now _that's _a lie! You just accepted defeat just now, for starters, when you stopped to chat with me instead of trying to get out of this place. I'm not even going to bring up all those times that Cloud managed to yank victory out from under your feet. Sephiroth, if you want to your choices to have any impact on the world, you have to take responsibility for them."

I stare at him coldly and say nothing.

"I think you know what I'm talking about, Sephiroth," he says softly.

"Shinra did that to me!" I object, anger blazing frigid behind my eyes. What does Jecht know about anything?

"You made a choice, Sephiroth," Jecht says gruffly. "You could've internalized the knowledge you dug up and made it your mission to stop Shinra from doing that to anyone else. But instead, you decided to do something different, something selfish."

"How do you know so much about me, anyways? All of you seem to know everything about my past, while I know nothing about all of you unless I hear it from you myself."

He doesn't say anything at first, but then after a moment of consideration he seems to decide something.

"You figure out the answer to that, and you'll understand everything that's going on here."

"So you're saying that you know. But you won't tell me. I could force it out of you."

"But you won't," Jecht says. He seems so sure of himself. "You wanna know why? Because you wouldn't beat information out of me any sooner than you'd take that blade to yourself. There's your hint, by the way," he says, and then leaves me.

I don't go after him. I'm suddenly curious. I want to prove him wrong, and so it's with a smirk that I take off my left glove, hold it between my teeth while I roll up my sleeve, and tilt the edge of my blade near the hilt into my palm.

Crying out with surprise more than pain, the wastelands of Midgar fill my vision for a split moment before I notice how fast the scuffed plants and cracked soil seem to be flying by me.

And then everything tumbles over itself.

A large green-black machine slips out of the side of my vision—a motorcycle—and I hit the ground, hard. If not for my leather, I would be bleeding.

Two other machines like the one I was riding halt in front of me, and silver-haired shadows jump off and run over to me. Shock seizes in me as I realize that they look not unlike me. The long-haired one stands above me, the one with more muscle kneels down in front of me.

"Hey, you okay?" he demands.

"You should pay more attention," the long-haired one says primly. "Why are you looking at us like that? Did you hit your head?"

"Who are you?" I demand. My voice doesn't sound right, but the force behind it does.

The one kneeling in front of me looks hurt. "What're you talking about? It's us, your brothers."

I remember the clones of Genesis and Angel, I remember the black-caped men. I panic. This was not what I intended to find.

"Give him some space," the long-haired one says calmly, and then looks down at me. "You need to rest. It won't do us any good for you to exhaust yourself before the reunion, especially if we haven't found Mother yet."

I look up at the two clones, and then everything slowly fades to black.

When I wake up, I find myself collapsed on the ground with the Lifestream pulsating around me. Dried blood forms a trail from my palm to the dirt; the wound is closed.

I don't understand what is happening to me. This talk of a reunion also reminds me of the black-caped men, of half-formed creatures that hoped to become something like me one day but failed. Is this all some strange sort of synthesis of the time that I spent on my world before summoning the calamity to the planet's surface, or is this something new?

"What do you know," I address to nobody in particular. Maybe I demand an answer from the Lifestream itself. Here in the Lifestream, every sort of living soul passes through. The collective unconscious must know something.

Once again, it's the presence of a single mind, fragmented into its component parts.

Did Jecht know this would happen? Do the others know about this, too? Why would they? My world has nothing to do with them.

I realize then that my conversation with Jecht had one thing in common with my conversation with Ultimecia—both said that they couldn't hurt me any more than they could hurt themselves.


	7. Self Forged Destiny

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Final Fantasy franchise, especially not Dissidia and FFVII. But everything not associated with such (original plot, original characters, original author rants, etc.) does belong to me.

This is the final chapter of Phobic! I promise I didn't plan it around seven chapters, it just worked out that way. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing throughout Sephiroth's journey, please enjoy the destination!

~greyrondo

**Chapter Seven: Self-Forged Destiny**

Hellfire scorches my throat. The last time I depended upon fire, I was able to walk amongst it without being burned. I ruled its every whim. Here, the fire rules me. I am not in control. There is a higher power at work, the one I must call my god, and it is by his will that I am here now, standing before his empty throne.

The throne is empty, but I am not alone. A guard kneels at the empty throne's right hand.

"Garland," I say lightly. In that moment, I understand. Garland did not free himself from the constraints of his servitude. He merely offered his sword to another king, and a harsher rule.

"I need to speak with Chaos," I state. I don't enjoy being toyed with like this.

"Someone like you cannot see…him," Garland informs me with his voice set like stone. "You turned your back on your life and cut the ties. You drew rivers of blood, and condemned all your deeds to rust."

"Who are you to say who can and cannot speak with Chaos?"

"Fight me. Prove you are alive enough to risk dying," he responds as he rises to his feet.

My blank expression is my agreement. But when I step forward, vertigo and panic seize me and I very nearly fall. The pumice beneath my feet is gone. I stand at the verge of air with a hollowed-out floor rooting my feet, and where there was Chaos' empty throne I now see skyscrapers, pillars of slate and silver ashes and tempered steel.

In just this flash of cognition, I know where I am. Midgar. But this is different: there is a sky. These aren't my memories.

A familiar voice speaks to me. I turn my head and Rufus Shinra in his wheelchair enters my vision, but then I blink. My eyes smart at the return of the stinging ash and blinding red.

"The right hand knoweth not what the left hand doeth," the Emperor says with relish as he peers up at me from the identical position in which I found Garland. Almost identical, that is. He kneels on the throne's left, and his expression is not one of servitude.

"Where is Garland?"

"Don't think of Garland. Don't think about Chaos. You answer to me now," he laughs.

I sigh impatiently. "I don't have time to deal with your delusions of grandeur."

He recoils as if I had just struck him. "_My_ delusions of grandeur?" he tells me accusingly. "You don't understand a single thing that's going on, even after all those hints that little brat slipped to you?"

My eyes narrow. "Why don't you tell me…"

"No," he states simply and rises to his feet in one mercury motion, liquidly brandishes his barbed staff. "No. I've decided that I will not let this happen. I will defeat you at your own game. Only one of us can carry on, and I refuse to let it be you—"

An orb of light forms. Just as I settle into a guard, the cold light of the mid-afternoon sky seizes me again. The orb of light does not disappear, but instead transfers to the end of my arm, cupped in my hand. Only that hand is not mine. It's the hand of the person who fell off the motorcycle.

Time skips, and I'm falling. But there is something, a black box, falling faster than I am. Not even the rushing ground is important enough for me to tear my eyes away from it.

That's impossible. Mother…?

The red world snaps back, and it is the Cloud of Darkness that I crane my head upwards to see. She hovers over the throne like a guillotine waiting to drop. First Garland, and then the Emperor. Now it's her. What is Chaos doing to me?

"My son," she calls down to me. Her voice is twisted inside of itself; she is mocking me. "You are different, yes. You're better. And fate has chosen you. The Promised Land…"

I'm angry now. "Don't talk as if you're—"

"Mother?"

The smells of smog and asphalt assault me here in this unfamiliar street as I cradle that broken black box in my hands. I close my eyes for unexplained grief.

"Don't you miss the light?"

Angeal?

My hands are empty except for my sword. I have dropped my stance. I gaze at the empty throne, and wonder where his voice came from.

"You know what it feels like to be the only one of your kind," I hear him say. Only it's not Angeal; it's Golbez. He appears from behind the throne. "Don't let that loneliness use you."

What does he want? What does he stand to benefit from being so charitable? I don't need his kindness. I have myself; that is all I need. I know what Chaos is doing: he is testing me. Only one of us can inherit Chaos' power. It was my dream to travel the worlds with that planet as my chariot. That dream only included me.

I wonder if Golbez is on guard. He must know what is coming.

My sword pierces even Golbez's armor with ease. I stab him through the heart. It's a noble death.

As he falls, his armor subtly transforms into Exdeath. I try to withdraw my blade, only to find that some force keeps it trapped in Exdeath's armor. So I push it deeper, until the hilt is only a foot away from Exdeath's face and I am looking down at his empty eyes.

"When did it happen? When were you changed? It didn't happen immediately, did it," Exdeath taunts me. "Do you know what your name means? You are the tree of life. Of course you know; it was in one of those notebooks. I didn't change after the first shadow, or the second. I endured a torrent of darkness until my branches finally snapped."

"We aren't the same," I insist hopelessly. My voice pales now in comparison to the boldness that faced Garland. That weakness satisfies Exdeath; my sword is free.

I pull it loose and rearticulate myself into an offensive fighting stance. I don't want to hear anymore of this. I want to speak with Chaos. With simply myself and my sword, I have no need to listen to anything but the answers I will demand from him. No need to hesitate. No need to falter.

The red world pales into an early sunset. My sword is gone, replaced by that black box. My head swims; my world is shattered but I don't know why. I have lost something, be it faith, or—

"What did it feel like, learning that your life was a total lie?" Kefka cackles as he leaps down from his perch atop the empty throne. That vision of a gentle sunset is burned from my eyes. "I mean, you must've had friends and stuff, right? Before that, I mean. Can't really see the good of having friends after… well… you know. It must have been bloody, the aftermath. How many innocents did you slaughter?"

I consider adding him to the head count. But before I make the decision, he makes another contribution to the one-sided conversation.

"And here's the real question: did it really make you feel any better?"

"What about you?" I demand from him. My anger simmers cold; I want to break him before I kill him. "Is life so much more valuable to you?"

He howls with laughter. "Are you joking? I'm with you on this: the average human on the street is a worthless waste of space. They're only good for something once they're in the past tense, if you know what I mean."

"…that's what I thought."

He stares at me in delight. "Oh, I get it. I know how you work. You see, you can still evoke a shade of the person you used to be, unlike me. You remember the good old days of 'morals' and 'kinship' and all that nonsense. And when you're the bad guy, you get to use that knowledge against anyone who gets in your way. Well, let me tell you something: that only works on people who care what others think about them, be it other people, or their god—"

Kefka drowns himself in mad laughter and flickers out of focus. Suddenly the laughter is mine as it poisons the evening air, and I see him. The one I've been waiting for.

Cloud.

"Save yourself," a woman whispers in my ear. Cloud is gone.

"Ultimecia?" I wonder aloud and turn.

She smiles apologetically. "Sorry to pull you away. But you need to focus on the here and now. The time will come soon when you must make a decision. The right decision… for both of us," she adds, and stands before me. "Survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily pertain to the beast with the biggest claws, after all," she chuckles.

"…what do you want?"

"Well, that depends on what you want. Do you have faith in Chaos? You should. With Chaos' help, you can become stronger. No, strongest. And you will never have to fear death ever again—"

"I don't think fearing death is his problem, Ultimecia. I think he runs after it. Why would he bother to actively seek out Cloud if he genuinely disregarded Cloud's abilities?"

Ultimecia turned around, a pinched expression of displeasure on her face, and she disappears. At the foot of Chaos' empty throne, Kuja lies with his arm draped over the seat to keep himself upright.

'I am Sephiroth's death wish', Kuja had said to me when we first met. Now he looked at me with a grave expression on his face.

"Look at me, Sephiroth. I'm a freak. And so are you. Question: who's to blame for that?"

I have a question of my own. "What did the Emperor mean when he said that you had been trying to tell me something? I think now is as good of a time as any. I have a meeting with Chaos that you're interfering with."

He sighs heavily. "Answer my question."

"Our respective creators," I snap.

He looks at me and laughs. "'Our respective creators'?" he repeats in disbelief. "Sephiroth, let me try and spell this out for you: our god doesn't like us. He makes our lives as pathetic as possible and then convinces us that our creators are to blame, but really, it's him. We amuse him, and in return he uses us until he's through with us."

"Just because you don't like the idea of a god being more powerful than you doesn't mean that—"

"Sephiroth, it's not about the power. Don't you get it? Come on, Icarus, fly towards the sun and see if you can't keep the wax from melting. It's about once, just once, being able to have a say in our lives. Look at you. Chaos didn't even care enough about you to give you a full set of wings. A one-winged angel, flying your lopsided path up to heaven and never reaching your destination."

"I mean," he continues, "I'm his dark messenger, his angel of death. Chaos hand-picked me from birth to do what you eventually stumbled upon, and I didn't even get wings. I'm not going anywhere near heaven. But still, we got a better deal than Jecht. What kind of god gets up in the morning and looks at all the people he's made and thinks to himself, 'well, aren't you lot adorable. Since your lives are going so well, why don't I introduce this concept I like to call 'Sin' and see how you manage?'"

"Angry, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm angry! Don't you go around acting like you're better than me—it wasn't compassion that made you burn down that town, Sephiroth."

"If you're so angry, then why are you here?"

And Kuja laughs. "Because I know how to beat our god. Right after I bid you adieu, I'm going to have a nice heart-to-heart skirmish with my brother, and I'm going to die. Better on my own terms than waiting for it."

"Genesis…"

The red world and the sunset cease to distinguish themselves. They battle for my attention; a flash of steel from the sunset catches my eye, along with the glint of Cloud's unnatural irises, eyes that we share. There he is again. What is happening here?

Then the red world shudders in my peripheral vision. There is someone at my back.

The sunset strikes my blade as I leap up for an attack fueled by desperation rather than sense. Even I am hardly surprised when Cloud fends me off. I have found him. I do not question the circumstances, not yet.

And yet I'm pulled away to the smell of cinders. A rough hand grips my arm just below my armor and shoves me forward through the flames. I whip around and I see Jecht's face just as I fall backwards onto Chaos' throne.

I'm falling now through the sunset. I'm falling on my own terms rather than waiting. But it isn't me. A name lingers on the tip of my tongue that sounds like Kuja but isn't, and I finally understand.

I am not the life I left behind. I am not my dream of conquest, I am not my assurance that fate chose me. I am not my loneliness, I am not my transformation. I am not the shell that my innocence left behind. I am not shameless self-preservation, and I am not my despair-fueled wrath. I am not even my defiance.

Sitting on Chaos' throne, Jecht is not the only one who looks at me. Before me stand the nine distillations of everything that kept me trapped in the Lifestream for all this time, given ephemeral names. Garland, the Emperor, the Cloud of Darkness, Golbez, Exdeath, Kefka, Ultimecia, Kuja, and Jecht.

They do not define me, but without them, I have nothing to separate me from Chaos. With Chaos, I could be perfect. I could have everything I want.

They are my imperfections, but without them, I return to what Shinra wanted me to be. A perfect, soulless weapon.

The red world fades. I am bathed in sunset, and yet it is my blade that I hold in my hands. I smile at the deep blue eyes afraid to meet my gaze.

I stand in the ruins of Midgar, and I know that this world is real. Not like the one that I had been trapped in for so long.

"Good to see you… Cloud."

"Sephiroth," he calls to me from behind the sword that I suppose now truly belongs to him. This battle belongs to him, now, too.

"Sephiroth," he says again. "What do you want?"

**THE END**


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